


A new life

by kate_the_reader



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Curtain Fic, Eames is bored, France (Country), M/M, Moving On, Starting again, Travel, not with Arthur of course
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:13:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22701538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_the_reader/pseuds/kate_the_reader
Summary: Eames is sick of dreamshare. Could he and Arthur start a new life?They take a trip to France and make a change.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 81
Collections: Eames' Stupid Cupid 2020





	A new life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oceaxe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceaxe/gifts).



> My darling friend oceaxe gives the best prompts: the prompt here was “distemper”.   
> That’s an old-fashioned word for illness, and it’s a kind of paint. Nothing simple, easy or commonplace about an oceaxe prompt! It made me think of being sick of your life as it is, and of starting afresh. I hope you like where your clever prompt took me.
> 
> I was so happy to write for you, oce! Over the years, you have helped me write several stories, always pushing them in directions that I had laid the groundwork for and then failed to see completely, before you opened my eyes.

It was yet another boring corporate job. Eames is so damn sick of stealing one venal tycoon’s secrets at the behest of another. Boring is at least better than bloody, at this stage of his life, but he’s ready for it to be over. He’s tired of pretending to be someone he is not, yet another office drone, or mid-level lawyer, cajoling gossip out of pissed-off, passed-over managers eager to fuck their employers over.

As he waits in an airport bar for his flight, half-listening to conversations (because however sick he is of this life, it’s hard to break the habits of a lifetime) he contemplates telling Arthur, saying: “Darling, let’s pack it all in, walk away, go and actually live a little.”

They stopped working together a few years ago; it got too exhausting keeping their relationship hidden from new crews, and letting it be known was far too dangerous, on the few jobs where the stakes were actually high. The people from the job when they realised they couldn’t keep dancing around each other forever all knew, but none of them were still working. They’d all quit to live normal lives long ago, clever bastards.

Finally, the flight is called and he knocks back the last mouthful of whisky and saunters to the boarding gate, almost but not quite the last one to arrive. That’s another thing he won’t miss — flights, airports, boarding gates, the endless marble-paved corridors, the shuffling crowds of exhausted, bewildered passengers, the glaring light and endless noise. He settles into his seat, firmly shuts down the flirtatious overtures of the young woman on the other side of the aisle, gets out his notebook and prepares to while away the hours.

How will Arthur react, if — when — Eames tells him he just can’t do it anymore? For all they’ve been together for years, Arthur can still be a bit mysterious. There are things he does in dreamshare that he appears to like a lot more than Eames enjoys what he does, even though to Eames’ mind his role is even more soul-crushing. He is — weirdly — more sociable, or perhaps Eames has just become less sociable over time. Arthur’s always liked training newbies, showing them the ropes, watching their amazement when they’re first taken under, tutoring them in the finer skills and etiquette of the game, shielding Eames from their wide-eyed wonder, their clumsy attempts to winkle his tradecraft out of him.

Eames doesn’t come right out with it over dinner his first night back. Arthur has gone to special trouble, roast lamb, something Eames taught him years ago — the meat perfectly pink, the potatoes exactly right. Fuck it, they could have this: cooking for each other every night, not just as a welcome home, but any night they chose, if one of them wasn’t always away, leaving the other to cook sad bachelor meals of pasta.

He doesn’t mention it in the bath Arthur runs for him, and joins him in, his lean torso reclining against Eames’ chest, bending forward to let Eames scrub his fingers through his hair.

Of course he says nothing about it later, when Arthur fucks him in their bed, slow and tender, the welcome he knows Eames needs, the one that settles him into his own skin like nothing else can.

But when he wakes Arthur with his jet-lagged restlessness, and Arthur asks: “What’s wrong Eames? What are you thinking?”, then he does say: “Yeah, I do have something on my mind, I’ll tell you in the morning”.

And he does, on their deck, sipping a mug of Arthur’s coffee — milkier than Eames claims to prefer, but exactly how he actually likes it — sitting at the table in the early sunlight.

“Aren’t you sick of it, darling? I’m so tired of the whole thing,” he says, getting straight to the point.

Arthur frowns, paying full attention.

“I hate it, and it wasn’t just this job. It’s so … petty, so tawdry. Stupid risks, sometimes, and for what? So some tycoon can get his product to market faster than his rival? I hate it even more since we stopped working together. Let’s pack it in. Go and do something else. Or do nothing.”

Arthur doesn’t respond straight away, sipping his own coffee and looking out over the yard. Eames waits. Even if Arthur disagrees, it’s not as if they can’t compromise. Arthur finishes his coffee and sets his mug down, reaches across the table for Eames’ hand.

“Yes,” he says, “I’m sick of it too. How long have you felt like this? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“Why didn’t you?” Eames retorts, but he’s so fucking relieved there’s no heat in it. He can’t help laughing. 

“What now?” says Arthur. 

“I don’t know. Do we need to plan, just yet?”

“Hell no!” says Arthur, and Eames gets up and pulls Arthur out of his chair and hugs him fiercely, burying his nose in his neck.

* * *

Once the decision was taken, it was surprisingly easy to get out. They just said no. No to job offers, no to the increased takes meant to tempt them to stay (“We don’t need it, Eames,” Arthur said, pulling up a spreadsheet of the extremely astute investments he’d been making for years, first just his money, and then Eames’ as well). No to attempts to try and get them to say what they were going to do next — if they told anyone in the business anything about their future plans, would the break be clean? Not likely.

And now here they are, Arthur has returned from his last job and they are lying in bed on the first morning of the rest of their lives.

You’d think Arthur would plan ahead for a step like this, wouldn’t you? Anyone who has ever worked with Arthur would say that: Arthur always, always plans. Arthur doesn’t do anything without reasoning out ahead of time what could go wrong and planning to avoid those kinds of cock-ups. Arthur is famous for his planning, he has spreadsheets for everything. And you would not be wrong. Arthur learned the hard way what happens when planning is half-arsed, when people are thinking — or not thinking — with their emotions instead of with their brains. Everyone who has  _ only _ ever worked with Arthur would say he plans meticulously, because he does. At work.

What Eames, who has not  _ only _ ever worked with Arthur, knows, is that Arthur in his free time is a man who likes to let things happen as they will; who, on holiday, is the one who wonders what’s down that side street, along that country lane, past that gate left half open. Arthur is the one who suggests they try that little restaurant with three rickety tables and the TV tuned to soccer (mind-blowingly good ragu is what happened in that particular place); Arthur is the one who asks the waiter what’s good, and takes a chance even if he doesn’t share a language with the man — they don’t think too closely about what was in some of those fantastic dishes.

All this take-a-chance free-spiritedness wasn’t Arthur’s default setting when Eames first met him, of course. And later when they got together — Arthur shell-shocked from the ordeal of losing Mal and almost losing Dom — planning was all that prevented him losing his grip on himself. But slowly, Eames had coaxed Arthur to loosen that grip, had asked what was the worst that could happen to them if Arthur didn’t plan for every eventuality, had shown him by the example of his own equanimity that even if things went in an unexpected direction, in ordinary life was that really so bad?

And of course, Arthur does still plan for the important things. Like having enough money invested cleverly to allow them to quit while they are ahead. But part of the point of walking away is so they don’t have to know exactly where they are walking to.

Which brings us back to the first morning of the rest of their lives. They’re lying in bed, languid after Eames woke Arthur up with kisses across his chest from shoulder to shoulder, and down his stomach until Arthur writhed (and pleaded to be allowed to pee first), and then started all over again, until Arthur writhed, and his hips twitched up, and Eames trailed his mouth, and his scruff, up the insides of Arthur’s thighs, until Arthur sighed, and said: “Jeez, Eames, put your mouth on me already!” And Eames laughed, his breath warm and a bit ticklish, and did as Arthur demanded, hand wrapped around the base of Arthur’s cock, and if it wasn’t mindblowing that was because Eames knew Arthur was tired and not in the mood for being taken to the edge and kept there; there would be a lot of mornings for that, and afternoons, and midnights. 

They’re lying in bed, languid, Arthur’s fingers drifting over Eames’ chest, over his ink, over planes of muscle not as hard as they were the first time he did it, but still firm.

“What do you want to do now?” Arthur asks.

“Make you breakfast.”

Arthur laughs. “Thanks, but I meant in the longer term.”

“I know, darling. I don’t know.”

The edge of Arthur’s mouth tips up in the kind of smile no one else currently in dreamshare has ever seen. “Me either,” he says.

“Perfect,” says Eames. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“Blueberry pancakes,” says Arthur, who’s strictly a plain omelette and one piece of wholewheat toast kind of guy on a job.

“Well, I walked into that, I suppose,” says Eames, swinging his legs off the bed and standing, hitching up his pyjama bottoms as he leaves the room.

When the last pancake has been eaten and second coffees are almost gone, Arthur says: “I don’t want to go straightaway, but how about Provence, in a month or so?”

“We could get a house. Stay for a while.”

“Go to markets.”

“Drink pastis.”

“Read books.”

“Become regulars at some local place you’ll find.”

“Yeah,” says Arthur, draining his coffee. “That’s enough of a plan.”

* * *

The house they’ve rented is in a little dying village, populated mostly by elderly women and a few men and far more cats than seems reasonable, which follow them when they go for walks down the twisting streets and out into the countryside under avenues of pollarded plane trees. There’s no market in this village, but there is one in the nearby town where they buy pots of honey and sheep’s milk cheese and enormous radishes with the damp earth they were pulled from still clinging to their magenta curves. There’s a shady tree in their backyard, with a hammock swinging from its sturdy branches, and they lie in it on sultry afternoons, too warm really, their skin sticking together, Eames’ hand playing idly through Arthur’s grown-long hair as he reads a dog-eared crime paperback left behind by another guest years ago, Arthur just dozing. They take drives past fields and vineyards and orchards loud with cicadas and eat dinner in the village’s one cafe, where the TV plays the Tour de France and there’s no menu, just what the cook decided to make that day. 

It’s perfect: no decisions more challenging than whether to drink white or red, no need to plan for anything.

But eventually, Eames has read all the paperbacks, and Arthur has caught up all his missed sleep and they are both feeling a bit restless, a bit at a loose end. On one of their drives, they spy a sign at the end of a lane: “à vendre”, slapped onto a wooden plank with black paint. 

“Want to have a look?” Arthur, behind the wheel, glances at Eames.

“Sure.”

So Arthur turns off the road onto the rutted farm track and they bounce along until a house and a couple of sheds come into view. There’s a rusty tractor parked next to the house and a few chickens scratching about. The house roof has an alarming dip in it. But there’s a grapevine-draped pergola sheltering a table and chairs where an elderly couple are apparently just finishing lunch. 

“You can do the talking, Eames,” Arthur says as he parks. Arthur’s French isn’t bad, but Eames learnt it younger, and he’s a mimic, so his accent’s better, easier for elderly country folk to understand.

“Bonjour, monsieur, madame,” Eames greets, walking towards the arbor with his hand outstretched as the man and woman stand.

“Je m'appelle Eames et voici mon partenaire, Arthur.” 

The homeowners introduce themselves as M. and Mme Agassiz and Eames explains that they saw the sign, decided to come and have a look, he hopes they aren’t intruding.

“Non, non!” M. Agassiz assures them, inviting them to sit. Madame goes into the house and returns with glasses, and pours them water.

Eames says again that they saw the place is for sale, and the couple explain their children think it’s time for them to move closer. “An apartment in town,” says Mme. Agassiz, and monsieur rolls his eyes. “They think we’re old,” he says. 

Would Arthur and Eames like to look around, see the house? They all stand up and monsieur leads the way. “Don’t mind the roof,” he says, the ridge beam is strong, it’s just always had a bend. Eames can feel Arthur making a mental note of that. The kitchen is basic, but functional; a scrubbed table in the centre, dishes draining next to the sink, a tall cupboard against the wall. Next is a small dining room and then a comfortable sitting room. There are two bedrooms. The whole house has the old-fashioned, slightly down-at-heel air of a place lived in for decades by people who are busy living, not decorating. The bathroom, with its chipped tiles and rust-stained bath, is the worst of it, but they’ve stayed in places with less salubrious facilities plenty of times.

Through the front windows they can see a small orchard, rows of grapevines, a field of sunflowers. Would they like to walk around the land?

As they walk, monsieur tells them he sells his grapes to the local co-op, and gets a few cases of wine for their own use. The fruit — apricots and peaches, figs and pomegranates — they sell at the market. 

“Honey, too,” says madame. She looks wistful. They will miss it, Eames thinks.

Turning down the farm track had been a whim, but the idea of how they could live here is starting to take hold.

The afternoon is soft and golden by the time they head back to the house. They should be going, says Arthur. No, they will surely stay and taste the farm’s wine, won’t they? So they sit under the arbor as the shadows lengthen, drinking soft red wine.

Are they really interested? monsieur asks. Eames looks at Arthur. He can already half see them here, right here, under this vine, sipping wine they helped grow, eating meals they’ve had plenty of time to prepare slowly, taking naps in the heat of the day. But there’s a crease of worry between Arthur’s brows.

They need to talk about it, says Arthur.

“Mais oui,” monsieur agrees, of course they must. Are they staying in the village? Will they be there long? Would they like to come back again? 

Come for lunch on Sunday, says madame, their son will be here too.

It’s almost dusk when they finally leave.

“What are we doing, Eames?” says Arthur as he drives back down the track, concentrating on the ruts.

“Thinking of buying a farm?”

Arthur laughs. “Well, we are retired.”

“You’d consider it? It’s not just the sort of holiday dream you allow yourself after a bit too much wine?”

“Not bad wine, either,” says Arthur.

Eames looks over at him and Arthur takes his eyes off the track long enough to meet his smile.

Back at their rental, Arthur gets out the laptop that Eames had mocked him gently for bringing at all and pokes around sites dedicated to selling French property to foreigners. Apparently sidestepping the _agents_ _immobilier_ is quite common. They’d need a notary to handle the paperwork, but they could deal directly with the Agassizes.

“The son might try to drive a harder bargain,” says Arthur.

“He might. You’d be more than a match for him.” 

Arthur sets his laptop aside on the sofa. “If we do this, it would certainly keep us occupied, the place needs work.”

“I saw you making a note about that sag in the roof.”

Arthur raises an eyebrow. “The sag that’s always been there? Yeah, we would have to get a surveyor in, find out what we’d be getting into.”

“And here I was picturing us lounging under the arbor drinking our own wine,” says Eames, reaching for Arthur’s hand. “We can do all the responsible stuff, but can we dream a bit too?”

“Bigger, you mean? Yeah.”

* * *

And then, after some to-ing and fro-ing that calls for both Arthur’s negotiating skill and Eames’ charm, they are standing in their new sitting room, looking out over their new orchard and their new vineyard.

“Fuck,” says Eames, “We bought the farm.”

“Thankfully not in the RAF sense,” Arthur replies dryly, which really isn’t fair, it was Eames who grew up on Second World War flying aces.

The place is empty, echoing, lighter patches on the walls where the Agassizes took down their pictures. Madame left the place impeccably clean, though.

“What now?”

“Paint the walls, buy a bed?”

“Yeah, but first …” Eames tugs Arthur close, slides a hand up his jaw and into his loose, curling hair and kisses him, feeling Arthur’s mouth curve into a smile under his. Arthur grabs a handful of his shirt front and steps backwards till his back is against the wall between the windows. “Do we have to wait for a bed?” Eames says, licking his way down Arthur’s throat, salty with the sweat of the day’s heat, bared to him by Arthur’s tilted chin.

“No,” Arthur says, his voice suddenly rough, his hips pushing against Eames’, “we don’t.” He slips a hand between them, deftly flicks open the button on Eames’ shorts and pushes the zip down, and gets his clever fingers inside, tracing his hardening cock. Eames drops his hand to join Arthur’s, getting his pants open and and pushing his briefs down. He wraps his hand round Arthur’s, both their hands on both their cocks. It’s hot and a bit awkward and it makes Eames feel like a teenager.

“Feel like we’re in high school,” he pants.

“Not … middle-aged … home buyers?” Arthur gasps, grabbing Eames by the wrist and lifting his hand to his mouth, licking it slick.

“Fuck, Arthur … sixteen …”

“Yeah …” Arthur is licking his own hand now, holding Eames’ eyes and putting on a bit of a filthy show and how is it possible to see someone you’ve been with for years, been fucking for years, in beds and sometimes in other places, how is it possible to see them completely new in this moment? It’s this thought more than anything that pushes Eames towards the edge, his hips thrusting against Arthur’s, their foreheads pressed together as they both look down at their hands and then he’s coming and Arthur’s coming and it’s a mess and they pant into each other’s open mouths and start to laugh.

“God, Eames, fuck.”

“Bed … for that.”

“Yeah.”

Arthur wipes his hand on the side of his shorts and slides down the wall until he’s sitting in an ungainly sprawl, and Eames follows him. He turns his head to look at Arthur, sweaty and flushed and with his hair in his face. “Middle-aged?” he says, “Middle-fucking-aged?”

“Retirees,” Arthur snorts and dissolves into stupid giggling laughter.

God, this is going to be fun.

* * *

They buy a bed, and a sofa, and Arthur researches paint, and then, after a few months back in the States packing up their old life, they’re back in France, starting their new one.

It’s misty outside, damp chill blowing through the pruned vines and the bare fruit trees, rattling the dead sunflower stalks. It’s not too bad inside, with a fire in the hearth, as they dip their big soft brushes in the bucket of distemper Arthur mixed up, lime wash and glue according to some ancient recipe he decided is the best way of dealing with the old walls of the place. It’s too cold for shorts, but Arthur’s ratty jeans are riding low on his hips and Eames still feels like a teenager, larking about with his best friend and a bucket of paint.

Painting walls is easy, it’s fun, and the sitting room soon feels like their space, with the sofa they bought and had redone, and the end tables they’ve picked up at flea markets, shelves for books, a basket of logs and vine prunings for the fire.

“You think you can take on the bathroom now?”

“Not remotely, but it’s got to go,” says Arthur, and finds the best local plumber and tiler to do the job. He tracks down a huge antique claw-footed roll top tub and a muscle-pummelling shower and creates a wonderfully decadent bathroom, while Eames paints the bedroom with more distemper — an extremely pale grey — and thinks about a painting he’d like to do, to hang over the bed. 

He hasn’t even thought of painting, proper painting on canvas, since he left school. He’s embarrassed to even mention it, it’s such a cliché of retiring to the country, and he probably won’t have time, if he wants to keep the vineyard and orchard going. But he does mention it, because if he can’t tell Arthur something he’s thinking of trying, what kind of man is he? 

It’s not as if Arthur doesn’t have plans of his own, things he’s dreaming of trying, of mastering — there’s an old brick bread oven outside and a stack of books about sourdough on the coffee table. Arthur’s chatted to Mme Agassiz and discovered all the best local producers, of cheese and butter and charcuterie. And asked M. Agassiz if he’ll teach them to look after the vineyard, and the bees.

Winter turns into Spring and there is work to do outside, vines to tend and an orchard hazed with blossom. 

Time used to blur into jobs and airports and getting ready for the next job and being alone at home waiting for Arthur’s job to finish. 

Here each day is distinct with new discoveries, new skills, new aches from unfamiliar work. Eames can hardly remember the time before, when he put effort into his body for its own sake, and for something to do. Now there is actual physical labour to achieve something, and defined muscles are simply a by-product. And Arthur? Arthur has always loved clothes, how they make him feel, how confident a great suit made him, a way to let others see how competent he was. Here, flour-dusted jeans and a shirt with the sleeves rolled out of the way of the bread dough he’s kneading do that job. A bee-keeping outfit demonstrates his competence now.

Spring turns into Summer and in the languid afternoon stillness they have lunch under the grapevine arbor, drinking soft red wine made from vines they own and care for, eating really great bread from the skill of Arthur’s hands, and the heat of their brick oven, with cheese made by a neighbour, and radishes Eames pulls each morning, the damp earth still clinging to their magenta curves. 

All the ennui that had been threatening to engulf Eames before they walked away has receded, revealing a future of possibility — of wine and fruit and honey and painting and work and long lunches and a middle-aged, deeply known, endlessly desirable lover in a new bed, in a new place. 

In a new life.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, having mycitruspocket as a beta and cheer-reader makes crafting a story so much more fun.


End file.
